


Oliver Trains Felicity

by orphan_account



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Forbidden, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-04
Updated: 2014-11-04
Packaged: 2018-02-24 03:30:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2566661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account





	Oliver Trains Felicity

Felicity spun in her chair, bored, and waited for her systems to update behind her. She watched as Oliver, Dig, and Roy trained in the foundry. Dig punched a dummy while Oliver, once again, pinned Roy to the ground. Felicity winced at the hard slap of the mats.

“Alright, alright, mercy,” Roy held his hands up a bit in surrender prompting Oliver to reach out a hand to help him up.

“If you’re just going to beg off every time,” Oliver started to scold.

“Yeah I know, practice makes perfect,” Roy mocked, “But how about later? My face is already bruised and that will take some explaining to do while I’m at work.”

Oliver conceded, nodding and handing him a bottle of water, which Roy lapped up eagerly.

Oliver started towards the salmon ladder, smiling slightly at Felicity before jumping up to the bar and beginning to rise on the rings.

Felicity was so caught up watching Oliver’s muscles flex and un-flex as he worked, she didn’t notice Roy looking between the four of them, brow furrowed in thought.

“Why hasn’t anyone taught Felicity to fight yet?” Roy’s voice rang out suddenly, shocking the three of them. Oliver dropped from the salmon ladder with a thud and Dig halted his punches instantaneously, both of them staring at Roy. 

Felicity couldn’t help but remember the one time she had tried to train on her own. Sara had been here, and she had been helpful, instructing her on a few moves that would work even though she was so small. When Oliver had come in though, he gave a confused look at her outfit choice, as though it was obscene that she train along with them. She hadn’t tried since.

“Unnecessary. Felicity doesn’t do fieldwork,” Oliver concluded after a beat in a resolved tone, causing Felicity to purse her lips to hold in irritated ramblings that longed to escape.

“Except when she does,” Roy contradicted arrogantly, “and when she does, she’s defenseless,” he gave a quick look at Felicity, “no offense, Barbie.”

She shrugged off his apology, probably too quickly, but she was silently cheering. Roy was absolutely right. She should know how to fight. She had been in too many dangerous situations not to.

Oliver saw Felicity’s interested face as she sided with Roy, and he turned frantically to Dig for back-up, annoyed.

“You know, Roy’s kind of right. She should know some basic self-defense moves. She should be able to take care of herself,” Dig mediated, much to Oliver’s disappointment.

Felicity watched triumphantly as Oliver clenched his fists, hating being out ruled. There was a long bout of silence as the three waited for Oliver’s response.

“I guess I could…” Dig started, finally breaking the tension, but Oliver quickly interrupted.

“No. I will,” Oliver looked at Felicity, who met him with a celebratory smile, “We can start tomorrow, right after work,” Oliver looked over her tight purple dress and black pumps, “You should probably, uh… bring a change of clothes,” he said awkwardly, before jumping back up to the salmon ladder and ending the conversation. Felicity turned back towards her computers, hiding her flush that had formed when his eyes had raked down her body. Both back at work, they missed the silent laugh exchanged between Roy and Diggle before they too continued their tasks.

***

Oliver felt nervous. It wasn’t the training that made him nervous—he’d trained multiple people before with no problem. It was who he was training that had him pacing the mats of the foundry as he waited for her to finish changing.

It had been a few months since that they had gone on their first and last date—that wonderful, terrible date. It had started off perfect; talking to Felicity was as natural to him as breathing, but that knowledge made him so nervous and excited that he ended up being the one babbling instead of her. It was the best date he had ever been on.

Until suddenly his world exploded. And everything went to shit.

Later that night, as he carried Felicity’s limp body back to the foundry, he loathed himself for putting her in danger. As Felicity’s heart stopped not once, but twice, he had a flash of how devastating it would be to lose her, and realized with a start that those words he had whispered to her in the mansion not so long ago, were true to the core. He loved her. Completely. But as she finally opened her eyes, her face bloodied and torn, he realized how much danger he really put her in by loving her. It was that night that he refused to let her love him back, because how could he keep her safe, being who he was?

So he pushed her away. He distanced himself as she tried to get him to open up. Watched as she finally gave up on him letting her love him, and turned to Ray Palmer. Ray seemed nice enough. He and Felicity had been dating for a few weeks now. She was starting to laugh again. Her smile had returned and even though it hurt that he wasn’t the one to put it there, Oliver wanted Felicity to be happy. And she finally seemed like she was.

“You ready?” Felicity’s voice echoed through the lair as she stepped onto the mat. Oliver tried not to linger on her small body making its way towards him, but he could feel himself staring. 

She wore a tight, small, black tank top that showed flashes of a pink sports bra along the straps. Her tiny shorts matched her bra, the neon making her legs look endlessly long and tan. Even her sneakers appealed to him—so different than her normal heels, making her a good four inches shorter than usual, which intrigued him; like he was seeing a different side of Felicity than normal. A smaller, more vulnerable side. Adding to this feel was her bare face, absent of both glasses and makeup, as she stared up at him with large sapphire eyes.

“Oliver,” she snapped a bit, “Are we going to do this or what? Because I swear if you were lying just to appease the guys I’m going to…”

“Yes, sorry, lets start,” Oliver interrupted, tearing his eyes from her.

“Please tell me you’re not going to make me slap water for a week like Roy,” Felicity said, wearily looking at a bowl on the desk next to her.

He tried, and failed, to hide a smile at that, “No. You should stretch first though,” Oliver instructed, but as Felicity began to leisurely stretch her limbs his libido took notice of her every movement and he realized what a mistake that request was.

“O-o-okay,” Oliver stammered out, “That’s enough. Lets do some weights first.”

She gave him a confused look before obliging and following him to the weight rack. He spotted her as she lifted the small weights repeatedly, trying not to grin as her face began to flush beneath him while she struggled through the long workout.

“I…would…rather…slap…water…” she huffed out after he made her do 200 reps. She sat straddling the bench with a hand smoothing over her sweaty hair and another gulping down water.

He raised his eyebrows at her, turning around to grab the bowl and setting it in front of her with a grin.

“Nope. That won’t be happening. Ever.” she insisted, giving him a look before standing up and re-racking her weights.

They trained for strength and endurance during every hour they had to spare. When they weren’t at work or doing Arrow business, they were either lifting or running. Felicity was surprisingly fast, her strides almost matching his the first day they ran together. After a week, she could outpace him, although she tired more quickly than he did. He knew Felicity was exhausted from the long hours of training, and he could tell her body ached when she would get up from her chair in the foundry slowly, but she kept up a cheerful face, anxious to get to the “fun stuff”, as she called actual fighting and weapons. Oliver wished they could never get to the fun stuff—it was much easier to ignore how gloriously Felicity’s cheeks flushed and how much he longed to reach out and touch her when they were running side by side and didn’t have to look at each other. He wished he could just run with her forever. When they ran, it was just the two of them, whatever they felt like saying in the moment, and the sun in front of them. He learned a lot about Felicity on those runs. She talked about her time at MIT, and he joked about the four colleges he had dropped out of. They never ventured into deep topics, but it felt good to talk about things that were so light. Everything was simple when they ran.

It was two weeks before Oliver finally had to admit that they had made as much progress as they could hope for in such a short time, so when Felicity finished changing that day, Oliver was already setting up the practice dummies on the mats.

“I get to do fun stuff today?” Felicity squealed excitedly, rushing over to Oliver’s side, “I mean not that the hours of running and monotonous lifting of weights wasn’t its own unique fun.”

Oliver chucked, “Well, try to hit it,” he gestured towards the dummy and looked at her expectantly.

“What…I can’t just… I don’t know how…” Felicity stammered, her excitement dimming a bit as she started blankly at the object in front of her. When Oliver made no move to aid her, apart from a raise of his eyebrow, she tentatively curled her fists and punched the bag lightly.

Oliver shook his head.

Felicity rolled her eyes at him, but focused more fully on what she was doing; Oliver obviously wanted her to figure out something herself. She tried to remember what Sara had told her last time she tried to fight. 

Felicity widened her stance, pulling her shoulders back and jabbing her fist forward towards the dummy. Before she could make contact though, Oliver’s own arm shot out, halting hers.

“Good. That’s how you should hold yourself”

“Really? Cause that kind of hurt my shoulders…” Felicity said, rubbing one of them.

“That’s because you weren’t standing correctly.”

Felicity shot him a bewildered look.

“Your stance wasn’t right. Your legs were a bit too far apart and used your elbows instead of your whole body to punch. But the way you held yourself was correct,” Oliver came up behind Felicity, adjusting her stance so she was positioned correctly, and continued talking with his face right behind her head, close enough that Felicity felt his breath in her hair.

“You stood confidently. You were focused and attentive,” Felicity turned her head to Oliver’s voice, and his eyes bored into hers, “Lose focus, and you lose the fight.”

Felicity shivered as she stared at Oliver. His mouth was mere inches away from her own, and she watched as his eyes flicked down to her lips, his mouth slightly agape as he breathed. If she reached up, just slightly…

Oliver suddenly had his arms at her waist and before she could think, she was being flipped and slammed into the mat. Before her skull could crack into the ground, Oliver’s hand came to the back of her head, bracing the impact. She panted unevenly as her heart pounded in her chest. Oliver’s body pressed hers into the ground, heavy on top of her.

“Don’t. Lose. Focus,” Oliver said pointedly, before sliding off of her and helping her quickly to her feet.

“Try again.”

By the end of the night, Felicity was sore in places she didn’t even know could get sore. Oliver hadn’t pinned her again like he did the first time— but she had spent the entire night punching and her shoulders and knuckles ached. After one hand had started bleeding from the rough material on the dummy earlier, Oliver had insisted that she punch him instead.

“No way!” She had said, bewildered.

“It won’t hurt your hand as much, plus you’ll see what it actually feels like when it’s another person. It’s not like you’re going to hurt me,” he said, a playful glint in his eyes.

Felicity tried really hard to prove him wrong. But in the end all he had was a slight stomach ache and she a sore shoulder, not that she was all that surprised. She sat cross legged on the mat as he picked up scattered weights around the room, returning them to their places. Watching him with his back to her, she grinned with a sudden idea. Kicking off her shoes so they didn’t squeak and give her away, she stood up silently, tiptoeing until she was about a foot away from his back, before leaping on him quickly.

She might as well have let out a battle cry for how little he was startled.

In no time at all, he had her pinned to the ground like earlier, his arms bracketing her face as she breathed heavily and pouted up at him. He chuckled and smiled down at her, one of those natural smiles that he didn’t let slip often. Like she had genuinely delighted him. She lived for those smiles.

She laughed with him for a minute, before they both fell quiet, staring at each other. He ran a hand over her hair gently, pulling the pony that was already hanging loose fully out, a soft smile still on his face. Her breath hitched at the feel of his hands in her hair. What was he doing? He had no right to touch her like this.After all, he was the one that pushed her away. She had Ray now. She had moved on. 

She was about to voice just that when Oliver’s finger trailed along her jaw, leaving a burning sensation in its path and removing all thought from her mind. His eyes were dark, and close—too close; his breath blowing air over her nose. She saw a drop of sweat glimmering on his neck, and her hand shot out to brush it away before she knew what she was doing. His eyes widened at bit at the contact, and he swallowed loudly, his adams apple bobbing up and down. 

She reached up, her hands in his hair and raked her nails lightly along his scalp, causing him to groan quietly. One of his hands came down to rest on her hip, while the other wrapped around her back, lifting her slightly off the ground and pulling her closer.

“Felicity,” he breathed out huskily, and the tremor in his voice broke her. She used the hand in his hair to pull his lips down to hers, arching her back to him so their bodied were flush. It was a kiss that took her breathe away and gave it right back. It was heavy and heated, but made her feel lighter than a feather. It wiped away every worry she had—it wasn’t her first kiss with Oliver, and it sure as hell wasn’t going to be her last.


End file.
